The First Advocacy Corporation (revisited)

The function of this blog is simple:

We have a big problem that threatens our entire democracy.

The Advocate in society - the idealists, the dreamers and the people who seek change of ANY kind against current policies (i.e. the people who do not act like robots), are not structurally protected in any way by our current system.

A democracy cannot function and will die without an informed and active citizenry. A democracy cannot function without advocates.

The Advocate role is in danger. Corporations are buying regulators and government under the guise of Capitalism, and now aggressively limiting what information you and I see.

At the same time government regulators and government in general, are growing more and more influential - bigger and less accountable - and more and more of the information we need to make decisions is being made harder to easily get to.

This is a structural problem and has NOTHING to do with who enters the role of the presidency AND IS MORE IMPORTANT and therefore needs to be THE issue that the 2008 Election centers around.

The most recent example of this was the exclusion of Dennis Kucinich from the democratic debates aired on NBC by NBC- even though he too was running for the democratic party nomination.

But why? Dennis Kucinich has the answer for you here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNXP1djL27A. It turns out that GE owns NBC and GE builds nuclear power plants, Raytheon is also owned by GE and is a military contractor.

In short, GE - has an interest in excluding presidential candidates that will shrink the Military Industrial Complex - GE is part of the Military Industrial Complex. This is the very thing Eisenhower warned us about (last 2 posts). This is NOT DEMOCRACY.

Whether you agree with Dennis Kucinich is IRREVALENT.

Whether you are Republican or Democrat is IRREVALENT.

Whether you have concerns about lobbyists is IRREVALENT.


The question is do you support censorship at this level?

This is the same kind of censorship that led to the invasion of Iraq.

This is the same kind of censorship that led members of our government to out a CIA agent - which is an act of treason according to George Bush senior - and then the president, his son, now seeks to pardon himself and all of the people in his administration so they cannot be held accountable - http://furiousmind.blogspot.com/2008/01/president-bush-seeking-to-pardon.html ?

This is NOT Democracy. In democracy your leaders are accountable. In a democracy you are informed. In a democracy you are protected by the government - that's it's job. A government exists for the people, by the people and of the people. This is radically distorted today.

You are not powerless. Create the Advocacy Corporation. END the invisible influence of Corporations like GE. Protect the Advocate - YOU are the Advocate.

Find your passion, whatever it is, and BE the Advocate for something YOU believe in....

Introducing the Advocacy Corporation:

The Advocacy Corporation type, or Anti-Corporation (AC), has one function - to create an active and knowledgeable citizenry that cannot be bought (imagine 50 FDA's exerting pressure advocating for public safety from the private sector). AC's do not legally need to make a profit (as most corporations do).

It does this by being partially federally subsidized, based on a tier of advocacy it has achieved and each citizen may create 1 AC if they choose every year - so if YOU create an AC - based on some type of transparent advocacy goal - you immediately have the ability to:

1.
Via FCC regulations to be put into place, to offer "public service announcements" on a topic related to your advocacy goal. Each channel - not network - must allot a 2 hour time block every day during prime time television (4 hours if the media owner wants to run commercials), for AC's ONLY to register within. A single AC cannot run more than once in a 3 month time period. Also a single point of view cannot run more than once in a 1 month time period. A similar model will need to be applied to print media as well or any other type of unregulated domain.

2.
Donate to an AC and get a tax deduction.

3.
Invest in an AC and have your money invested into Advocates in society consistent with your advocacy goal. There is however, no ROI guaranteed.

4.
Go to a web site that transparently displays why the AC is invested in a particular Advocate and how close the Advocate (a person, organization, corporation, politician, etc.), is to getting a "cash infusion" - once a point is reached determined by the AC itself in it's charter, an AC MUST invest shareholder money AND donations into it's Advocates.


Change the system - Create The Advocacy Corporation type and NOTHING will ever be the same again. YOU are the Advocate :)

The Advocacy Corporation Vs. War

I am going to say this once. The Advocacy Corporation type once created, will help to prevent wars.

I recently watched The Fog of War - 11 life lessons of Robert S Mcnamera, and after doing so I am convinced of this. It also cements the logic of my last post. So why am I convinced?

Let me explain.


The most compelling reason to watch The Fog of War (link on the left), is that it interviews the leaders of both sides of two of the most contentious conflicts in the 20th Century and CLEARLY puts to rest arguments that when we dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Japan was almost ALREADY totally destroyed due to the low level air guided fire bombings BEFORE we dropped those bombs.

In the Cuban missile crisis, Castro says he DID have nuclear missiles in Cuba - when many in the military who were part of the Military Industrial Complex Eisenhower warned about (last post) - were clamoring to go to war with him. He also DID tell Kurschev he would use them if attacked. We only averted total nuclear annihilation because someone closse to JFK had empathy for Kruschevs position.

In the Vietnam conflict, the Vietnamese people were fighting a civil war and we thought it was a war against communism and treated it so. In other words, we made crucial errors in judgment , by not seeing things though the eyes of the people there, that cost millions of lives. What Mcnamera says is that this is EXPECTED in war but with nuclear weapons, you don't get a chance to make mistakes.

He says that every military general, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they have made mistakes - we are all people and therefore fallible. I agree with this.

In other words, the problem was one of awareness and then developing empathy for your enemy's position and their thinking - to see things though their eyes - precisely what the Advocacy Corporation is specifically designed to address.

If bad policies are the problem, then we can solve that problem by increasing visibility to that problem. Today, we are actively doing the opposite.

Policies are created based on stakeholder involvement. If you do not have all the stakeholders (advocates), involved in a decision, you get a slanted policy.

If JFK did not have the other person to his side saying that there was another way to deal with Castro, (though Kruschev), we would not be here today. This other person was a stakeholder who had a voice. Thank God for that voice.

Conversely, JFK had tried to get us out of Vietnam by reducing the number of military advisors. First, the leadership of South Vietnam was assassinated. 3 weeks later, JFK was assassinated. Shortly after that Martin Luther King was assassinated after also being rather vocal about Vietnam. By removing all the advocates for a peaceful solution, we then got what SOME people wanted, WAR. What a price to pay.


Today, we have a similar situation unfolding. Read the Stratfor (Global Strategic Intelligence), reports (link on left), or look at both extreme points of view, to know how complex things REALLY are today (as they were then). STOP watching the news - it's at best entertainment and at worst, propaganda - and you are not really learning anything.

But this is not a post about the past. This is a post about the future.

This post is about how we can reduce wars. To do that, you need more than tolerance and understanding - you need advocacy and you need awareness.

I recently wrote about learning tolerance and understanding about other religions on Helium (link on left). In summary, I don't believe in tolerance. I believe in respect. Respecting people for their similarities and differences. Tolerance is about respecting an idea or belief system - NOT a person.

To respect others you need to understand others. To understand others you need to increase your level of awareness to encompass their world view. THAT is the problem.

IT IS NOT PROFITABLE TO INCREASE PEOPLE'S AWARENESS

In fact, corporations and governments regularly prey and DEPEND upon people's LACK of awareness so they can continue to do EXACTLY what they want to do. Do you really think that when Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle" about chopped off body parts being found in the food people ate, the meat packing/preparation companies just said "ok, we will fix that"? No, there needed to be outcry from INFORMED people and this is how the FDA was formed.

We are talking about tolerance, understanding and respect for other people so we don't end up in wars - how do you get tolerance, understanding and respect? You advocate for it. What platform do you use since the media is currently owned by 5 corporations only concerned about profit so they put out content that is NOT going to challenge people?

Do you really think that it matters much if you sit in a room with a large group of Iranians and come an understanding of one another parting with hugs and the next day your government attacks their homeland and kills their relatives? THIS is what we are talking about here.

The problem we have is - we don't see their relatives get killed (that's WHY we have embedded journalists - do you really think that if people had to SEE people dying that would go good for the war effort?). We are misinformed deliberately by key stakeholders who benefit from decisions made, so the battle is really over YOUR heart and YOUR mind. Win that battle and every lie dies at the altar of truth.

I can assure you we are not going to agree on a lot of things (remember there is some weird stigma in society where religion and politics are off limits), but what we can agree on is that we have a common goal:

Allow the information in our society to flow freely and let people make up their own minds about things with ALL the other information available to them

The Advocacy Corporation - protects the advocate - YOU are the advocate.

It does not matter what is going in the world or what truths or lies that are present - with advocates - with YOUR involvement whatever truths or lies can be identified by an informed and active citizenry. We are neither informed or active. With the creation of the Advocacy Corporation, I intend to change both.

What YOU can do TODAY is become more aware and more inclusive in your world view taking in a wide variety of sources of information and exposing yourself to people critical of your ideas then wars for the wrong reasons will end.

Create the Advocacy Corporation and ensure that it BECOMES profitable to increase your level of awareness and the wrong reasons for doing things and the wrong things we are doing, will get weeded out faster...

The Advocacy Corporation Vs. The Military Industrial Complex

"...This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new.... In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists - and will persist. We must never let the weight of this kind of combination endanger our liberty and democratic process. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense so that security and liberty may prosper together."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961 - farewell address


"The Defense Budget is 3 quarters of a trillion dollars. Profits went up last year by 25%. When war becomes that profitable you are going to see more of it."
"We have got an empire. There is no excuse for 725 military bases in 130 foreign countries;"
- Chalmers Johnson (CIA, 1967-1973)


"The United States is the greatest force for good in the world. We have, not an obligation to go out and start wars - but certainly to spread democracy and freedom throughout the world."
"When does the United States go from a force for good to a force for imperialism?"
- John McCain

I recently watched the movie Why We Fight (see left sidebar for link). What I found most striking was "Lockheed Martin has ensured that a piece of its B2 Bomber is manufactured in every state in the United States - so the congressional representative in that state will lose jobs and piss off their constituents if they advocate reducing defense spending" (paraphrased).

Then I thought to myself. This is EXACTLY what the Advocacy Corporation, or Anti-Corporation, is designed for.

Eisenhower warned that the collusion of military, industry (Corporations) and Congress (and now think tanks - if you consider Iraq and The Project for A New American Century) - would endanger our liberty and democratic process. We are very much in that world he envisioned and warned us against, today.

Many people want to just pin this on George Bush and the Neocons (Neo Conservatives). You need to understand that these people are opportunists who believe the United States should be the next Rome - and under our stewardship the world will prosper (which it may),- YET, THEY ARE NOT THE PROBLEM.

Looking back on history we can see that we had all kinds of extremes of thought in this country. THAT is what this country protects and makes it what it is. So even if people do believe in the archaic philosophy of "Might makes Right" - the creed of every bully on a playground, THAT is irrevalent.

What is relevant is Eisenhower warned. If you only have a hammer then everything is a nail. If you only have 3 quarters of a trillion dollars going to defense (and little money going to all other segments of your society), everyone is a terrorist, a bad guy - your enemy. In this model, the question is not will we invade Iran - but when? The ONLY thing that can prevent this is an alert and knowledgeable citizenry - who can support politicians that see the problem and who want to fix it.

We are on a sled going 100 miles down a hill right now. The inertia of the system is now so great that all it takes to take this great country to war is some people will a bully mentality to ascend to the presidency, a congress that does not check the power of the executive branch of government - their responsibility, a media that does not want to tell the truth because it will hurt their corporate stockholders too much and a citizenry that is neither alert nor knowledgeable.

So therein lies the key:

The ONLY thing that can prevent this is an alert and knowledgeable citizenry - who can support politicians that see the problem and who want to fix it.

So how to we provide an incentive to the good people in government who WANT to fix our problems?

Create the Advocacy Corporation or Anti-Corporation (AC), to INFORM the people - at the governments expense. Protect and institutionalize the role of the advocate in society - the creators of this great documentary - Why We Fight. Set as part of the design of the Advocacy Corporation, direct media access on television channels for ANY Advocacy Corporation a percentage of the time.

In other words, ensure that the forums are protected that create an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.

An AC Corporation type has ONE LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY - Promote Advocacy based on the organizations Advocacy charter. It is subsidized by the Federal Government, allows you and I to donate to it and get a tax deduction and allows direct investment and ownership of stock (although it has no LEGAL responsibility, unlike corporations, to make a profit). Once formed, its JOB is to create an alert and knowledgeable citizenry based on its advocacy goal. It does this by transparently investing money into "advocates" based on a point system. Once the advocate gets enough points they get an infusion of cash for "doing right" by the AC.

In essence, the AC is the direct counterbalancing force needed to combat the influence of corporations at every level of society. It cannot be bought, sold or transferred, so there is no need to worry about money being leveraged to dampen it's message. Congress today debates about what to subsidize in society and we get all kinds of "special interests" trying to appropriate monies via lobbying for their concerns - no more - congress will just subsidizes ALL AC's at some level (the rest coming from AC donors or stockholders) so there is no preferential treatment for one idea over another. This takes us into a new age where the ONLY responsibility of congress in terms being pressured one way or another to approve spending, will come FROM an AC and NOT a lobbyist because an AC has NO profit motive and ALL of it's actions are by default, transparent. All congress needs to sign off on is appropriating money to "ensure that an alert and knowledgeable citizenry exists".

In the context of the Military Congressional Think Tank Industrial Complex this is how the scenario would play out in the case of Lockheed and the B2:

1.
One or more AC would form with an Advocacy Charter like: "Shrinking the role of the Military Industrial Complex in Government".

2.
The AC would identify it's "advocates"

3.
After the initial infusion of cash for starting the AC by the Government people could invest in the AC right alongside other corporations on the stock market based on it's "Advocacy Profile" (i.e. the organizations and people the AC is planning on investing directly in and supporting).

4.
The AC would then choose its "Media Platform" and its reporters who are paid by the AC directly to specifically support, write stories, blog, etc. about the initial Advocacy goal and those individuals, corporations, organizations AND POLITICIANS that directly support the Advocacy Goals of that AC.

5.
The government would then issue another infusion of cash based on the size of the AC and if it was successful in hitting its initial "2-3 month Goals" (think of bronze, silver, gold and platinum customers but with respect to the AC). This allows the AC to compete for talent with the corporations.

6.
Once capitalized the AC would begin to do its work and in this case, since Why We Fight is an Advocate - it gets it's first infusion of cash (subsequent infusions of cash will be based on hitting certain points or goals - this will be transparent).

7.
The AC now gets media time for free on each channel via the FCC - as a direct counterbalance to media consolidation - and can now use that time in a registered timeslot. All communication providers would need to ALLOW 20% of their communication channels a DAY during prime time, to be used for an AC at any given time (i.e. for Television the 6 PM-11 PM window - for Print media 20% of the magazine, etc.). They can NOT charge the AC (because it is doing a public service) nor run commercials during this period. What they get in return is FCC licensing and no more public debate/concern about media consolidation (i.e. the AC ENSURES that media consolidation WILL NOT lead to a narrowing of viewpoints in the public sphere), so they can compete effectively - even have just 2 corporations own the media instead of the 5 that do today.

8.
Now, the AC could air Why We Fight, as an advocate, in it's entirety and the media owner could not stop this - because it is considered "a public service announcement". This will in turn put pressure on the system in ways that do not exist today. This will lead very rapidly to a reinvigorated democracy and after the AC airs the movie on major media stations - as a public service announcement - the real momentum begins.

9.
Once people see this movie from the AC, the AC will be flooded with donations - remember people can get a tax deduction for donating to the AC. The AC will then have more resources to continue towards its Advocacy Goal and public perception will be starting to change. The AC will then invest in the politicians that AGREE with the assertions in the movie and have a PLAN to do something about it. Public debate will ensue that will focus on having the AC or the politician advocates, now associated with the AC, find ways to reduce the size of Lockheed Martin's influence in congress with respect to the B2, by having the AC reporters run stories on those politicians who are victims themselves (i.e. their constituents will be mad if they lose their jobs) and raise public awareness again through a "public service announcement" by an AC and try to find a better solution. The thing is now awareness is present and the public is talking and debating about the complex issues their representatives face.


If we don't do this all I can say is "Brawndo - The Thirst Mutiliator - It's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes." - See the movie Idiocracy to get the reference :) (left sidebar link)

Introducing the Advocacy Corporation

Few people can argue that the United States has radically changed over the last 10 years - but many wonder why.

It is not uncommon knowledge that corporations are here to make a profit. That is a good thing - we want a healthy economy. Capitalism is the ONLY economic system that preserves free choice by letting the market decide what is good and bad for the people. Yet what you may not know is that PROFIT IS THE ONLY LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY of a corporation.


THEY MUST MAKE A PROFIT FOR THEIR SHAREHOLDERS. It does not matter how they do that according to the legal definition of a corporation. Even if the people in the Corporation were a bunch of peace and love environmentalists or Born Again Christians or if Jesus Christ himself were at the head of a Corporation - HE WOULD STILL BE LEGALLY REQUIRED TO MAKE A PROFIT.

In other words, this has nothing to do with a person - good, bad or indifferent. The structure demands this behavior (it's amoral like a building), and this structure is cast in the mold of a psychopath (i.e. they have zero empathy), so all it MUST do is make more profit upon more profit upon more profit regardless of the consequences (externalities). Period. It's like trying to argue with a raging bull - you cannot reason with it - just get the hell out of it's way (however it is good that we have good upstanding moral people who run corporations - otherwise we would REALLY have a problem).


This is all but an annoyance in a world that has borders (i.e. they only put shows on television and in theaters that have sex, violence, drug use and pointing out people's faults because that's what sells - Jerry Springer taught us that) - so we don't get intellectually stimulated or engaged - small price to pay.

However, in a FLAT WORLD - where you are competing with every other man woman and child on this planet for a job (and you probably don't know that) - this translates into outsourcing your job to China. Your employer can build the widget cheaper there. You are expendable. Tough luck - you lazy people, pull yourselves up by the bootstraps, stop expecting the state to take care of you and learn something new :).

If only it was that simple. At least the media informs the people so we CAN know we need to start retraining now and we have the government, social programs, lawyers, advocacy groups, churches, the ACLU, ad nauseum to make sure that people don't end up on the streets.... that was 10 years ago.

Where We Were 10 Years Ago:

So what has changed? Take a look.

Where We Are Today:

What We Need NOW - Introducing the Advocacy Corporation

Without some force advocating that the people of a democracy remain informed - a democracy is dead. We are now at this point where the amount of money required to continue to inform the people is growing exponentially in a time where there are changes occurring on the planet RIGHT NOW that are as significant as the invention of the light bulb (and you probably do not know that).

Let me explain some things to you. Thomas Friedman wrote in the book the "The World Is Flat" that AFTER the dot com bust billions of dollars of fiber optic cable was laid down to China and India - this effectively connected the whole world together on a global web based platform.

The REAL reason behind the dot com boom was that businesses saw that they could take a process, break it apart and digitize it so that they could farm that process out across the planet to the cheapest labor market (i.e. seek the CHEAPEST way of producing a widget for the dollar and the shareholders of the corporations). Our educational system, political system and our social social systems - nothing we have right now though government or the media HAS REMOTELY PREPARED US FOR THIS.

Put simply, very soon I can imagine a day where you are in a hospital and will request a meal that will be taken by a call center in India, sent to the short order cook in your hospital over fiber cable under the ocean and then sent up to your room. This is the model of efficiency (since India has cheaper labor than here) and MUST be followed. Don't believe it? I write software to do this kind of thing called "work-flow automation" software and it will put the lowest paid labor in a different country at the rate it's being used by big business.

What is needed right now is the next challenge to the American people to get a man on the moon and what we are getting is the outing of CIA agents, which even according to George Bush Sr. is treason - because their ambassador husband proved that Iraq had no yellow-cake uranium and this risked spoiling the party to invade a sovereign nation that has lots of oil. This is asinine and immature.

We have a real crisis on our hands and the media is actually NOT TELLING US THIS. most importantly, they are not giving us a framework to understand these events within - no context - just a lot of pundits spewing information. The truth is you are on your own - and you better be prepared - you NEED an Advocacy Corporation on your side.

We have the head of New Line Cinema spending 15 years to produce a movie that is 10 times better than ET called "The Last Mimsy" and it is only in theaters for less than 2 weeks.

We have a music producer called Timbaland who is a genius who will probably mainly end up producing songs that advocate sex, violence and drug use (but his skills can EASILY cross genres - his new album "Shock Value" - PROVES IT - as songs range from everything from collaborations with 50 Cent to collaborations with Fall Out Boy to collaborations with Elton John to collaborations with artists in India.


There is actually now a major financial incentive to keep people dumb and stupid and just "entertain" them:

Dumb and stupid people cannot compete with China or India in a FLAT world

Dumb and stupid people cannot complain when the Budget of The National Science Foundation is cut

Dumb and stupid people cannot understand how to act in their own best interests

Dumb and stupid people cannot vote effectively (they vote with their emotions and not fact)

Dumb and stupid people cannot exist in a functioning democracy or it will crumble


In these desperate times, we MUST protect the role of the advocate in society and to do that we need to institutionalize it. This will ensure that governments nor corporations can deprive people of what they need most in a functioning democracy: The Truth.


Join me in helping make creating a whole new type of corporation, the Advocacy Corporation, THE CENTRAL ISSUE DEBATED IN THE 2008 ELECTION.

I do not know how we are going to do this but if enough people believe in something ANYTHING is possible - go to YouTube and type in "Obama girl" :).

Thank You.